Remote controllers have been widely used in various equipments in daily life, such as televisions (TV), video recorder/players, air-conditioners, cars, motorcycles, electric scrolling gates, lights, and projectors. Though remote controllers have the advantages of simple operation and low cost, they can only be operated with realistic keys and are thus limited for operational functions and other applications. Improvements to remote controllers have been made to expand the functionality, such as selecting a program list on a television. However, complicated operations of pressing the realistic keys keep users from using them. Moreover, users can only select programs or items from a fix list that is provided on a display, but not allowed to input words or symbols at his own choice. Thus, the resultant low controllability and poor flexibility could not satisfy the usages in future home entertainment audio/video (AV) products.
On the other hand, touchpads are well-known and low-cost devices, which are mainly used to provide mouse function in notebook computers. In spite of the advantages of a touchpad, its application is limited in computers and cannot be extended.
Therefore, it is desired to provide a new remote controller from a different point of view to increase the function of the remote controller enormously with the presumption of light, thin and low cost.